A sense of Davis Shores

Grad students recommend parks, sidewalks, water taxi for neighborhood

This entrance to North Davis Shores would be an ideal location for a sign, similar to the one at Davis Islands. This can be accomplished with simple, but stately, waist-high walls bearing the name and community sign.

One option for the new Oglethorpe Boulevard could be to reintroduce pedestrian sidewalks, utilize medians, and add tree plantings to define the space. The road would serve the pedestrian, cyclist and the automobile and would make Oglethorpe Boulevard more closely resemble what was originally planned.

A fountain at the confluence of Alcarzar Street, Flagler Boulevard, and Gerado Street would give Davis Shores a central landmark -- a place where residents can walk to gather and listen to the calming flow of water.

Marcus Monroe envisions a transformed Davis Shores -- one adorned with public art, blooming with native flowers and dripping with an iconic fountain.

Monroe is one of a group of University of Florida graduate students who surveyed the neighborhood, which developer D.P. Davis in the '20s envisioned as a Mediterranean-style paradise but that grew into a melange of architectural styles.

After months spent cobbling together the history of the neighborhood, singling out historic homes and pondering ways to unify the eclectic area, Monroe and his group presented their findings to the neighborhood in mid-December.

"While the area of North Davis Shores presently thrives as a residential community, the students (presented) strategies to make it a better neighborhood with a stronger sense of place ...," Roy Eugene Graham, director of the University of Florida's historic preservation program, said in a news release.

A sense of place is important because it creates "a powerful bond that unites residents of a neighborhood and improves the quality of life," Monroe told the audience.

"We're saying it's a good neighborhood," Monroe added later. "We're trying to give them a lot of ideas of how to enhance it and get it to its full potential."

Those ideas include incorporating some "City Beautiful" concepts, which the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians said include stately plazas, embellished boulevards, waterside promenades and prominent public statues, fountains and memorials.

Their ideas also included signage, pocket parks, waterfront walkways, a kayak ramp and a commuter water taxi.

Proactive preservation, beautification

If money weren't an object, here's what the neighborhood might look like:

* OGLETHORPE BOULEVARD: This street, which runs east to west between Inlet Drive and St. Augustine Boulevard, would become a boulevard in the true sense of the word.

It would have wide sidewalks, large rights of way and Florida-friendly trees like sabal palms.

"We encourage you to re-emphasize the street ...," the students said in their presentation.

* MORE PUBLIC ART: The students recommend public art on neighborhood corners, art voted on and generated by the community.

"To find designs for the neighborhood art, Davis Shores could host a competition in which area artists and students from Flagler College could enter designs," Monroe said during the presentation.

That art could be placed at street intersections and in parks.

* MORE SIGNS: The neighborhood would have waist-high, simple but stately signs bearing its name. The signs would be placed at the entrances.

* COMMUNITY RECREATION CENTER: Davis, the developer, added a tennis center to one of his other neighborhood projects, Davis Islands in Tampa. The group recommended that North Davis Shores follow suit and add a rec center.

* MORE PARKS, GREEN SPACE: Davis' original plans called for several parks and public spaces. They were never carved out, but could be.

A handful of lots exist between the 300 blocks of Alcarzar and Ribault streets and at Comares Avenue, at the southeast tip of the neighborhood. They'd be great for parks, the students said.

* MORE WALKWAYS: The original plans for the neighborhood included more than 100 miles of streets and sidewalks, the students said. Adding a web of sidewalks would bring the neighborhood closer to Davis' plan and make it easy to visit neighbors, parks and some of the other attractions they'd like to see added to the neighborhood.

* FOUNTAIN: The students recommended creating a landmark fountain, like the one in Davis' Miami Shores neighborhood. They thought the multi-tiered fountain would be best placed at the confluence of Alcarzar Street, Flagler Boulevard and Gerado Street.

"The fountain could use a solar-powered pump to avoid the use of nonrenewable energy," they said.

* WATER ACCESS: The students recommended a kayak and canoe launch on Inlet Drive, which they called "an excellent location ... given its proximity to Anastasia State Park."

The group also would like to see the neighborhood add a water taxi, which could use the boat slips at Edgewater Inn and cross back and forth to the mainland.

* OTHER DETAILS: They also recommended planting the neighborhood with native plants, flowers, shrubs, trees and grasses and to water the plants using a rain barrel system.

"This would give the neighborhood a positive identity and serve as an example to other areas ...," they said.

A next step?

Kim Del Rance, another graduate student, said that there was a lot of interest in the recommendations.

She estimated that about 50 residents showed up for the presentation, filling the meeting room at the Government House downtown.

"I had a lot of people come up afterwards," she said.

Some of those that attended, including representatives from the St. Augustine North Davis Shores Neighborhood Association, said they liked the ideas.

"The problem is getting the funding," said Jeanette Berk, association president and owner of a home on St. Augustine Boulevard.

"That's a little more complex."

The association has already netted grants for previous projects, including bike racks and a historical marker.

But, "all of (the grant funds) right now, through these economic times, that's frozen," she said.

So, she plans on waiting until after the holiday to set four official meeting dates to discuss plans.

"We will start meeting and see what the neighborhood wants to do," Berk said.

Dangers

A group of University of Florida students studying the North Davis Shores neighborhood identified the following threats to its historic character:

* Flooding.

* Delayed maintenance of historic homes.

* Erratic weather.

About Davis Shores:

North Davis Shores is part of a larger "City Beautiful" project that developer D. P. Davis sought to create on the island in the 1920s soon after the success of Davis Island in Tampa. The City Beautiful concept included stately plazas, embellished boulevards, waterside promenades, prominent public statues, fountains and memorials.

If it had not been for the Florida real estate bust during the Great Depression and the disappearance of the developer, the project would have outshone his other examples of Mediterranean Revival architecture, located in Coral Gables, Snell Island in St. Petersburg and Miami Shores.

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I don't understand. What's wrong with the present neighborhood that it has to be developed or "improved"? Except for the Conch House, the neighborhood is a quiet retreat that's only minutes from many happenings. I prefer going to these "happenings" instead of it coming to me!